by cameron | Oct 22, 2006 | Melbourne, Uncategorized
Gate 10. Melbourne International Airport.
Sniffer dogs sniffing at my bag. Maybe it’s the sunnies that give me away.
Number of people who have come up to me and said “Hey aren’t you that guy on the front cover of the Bulletin” = zero. I even spent ten minutes standing next to it at the newsagent here to tip people off… nada.
Couldn’t take my filtered water bottle on the plane. Apparently can’t get into the US with it in my carry-on. There goes my plan to stay hydrated on the flight.
Books I’ve got on in my bag to read on the flight:
Ideas: A History of Thought and Invention, from Fire to Freud by Peter Watson
Naked Lunch by William Burroughs
The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson
Also got The Art of the Start by Guy Kawasaki in the suitcase. No doubt that’s going to come in handy over the next month.
I hate flying. God I wish now I hadn’t bothered to watch the first two seasons of LOST. Here’s a question – if my plane crashes on a pacific island, which member of LOST do you think I’d be?
- The natural-yet-unwilling leader everyone turns to?
- The slick guy who collects all of the valuable stuff from the wreckage, sells it for a profit and is popular with the ladies?
- The fat funny guy?
- The weird philosophical guy who is good with knives but is keeping secrets?
- The panicky guy who runs around saying “OH MY GOD WE’RE ALL GOING TO DIE!!!” and then starts figuring out who he is going to eat first?
Okay we’re boarding. Here’s goes 19 hours (Auckland stopover) of hell.
by cameron | Oct 21, 2006 | Melbourne, Uncategorized
In early 2005, the wife of one of my oldest mates was diagnosed with breast cancer at age 40 and spent most of that year undergoing treatment to overcome the disease. It was a harrowing year for them, their two young kids, family and friends. Fortunately, Lisa is now in recovery and doing well. Typically of Lisa, she turned her experience into something positive to help other people:
Lisa and Michael were unable to find a suitable children’s story book to help explain the illness and its treatment to their two young children so Lisa began a journal, and now, with the help of her son Harrison, she has turned this story into a children’s book about cancer as seen through the eyes of a 7 year old boy.
The book aims to assist parents in explaining the breast cancer journey to their children in an informative and entertaining way. It offers explanations of tricky medical terms, cancer treatments, medical personnel, and helpful hints for family and friends, opening up areas of discussion between parents, carers and children.
Three generations contribute to the making of the book. Lisa has written their story assisted by her son Harrison who is now 8. The story is supported with drawings also by Harrison and illustrations by his Nana, Lisa’s mother. It is suitable for children aged 3 to 10 years of age, and priced at $16.95.
The story book is self-published with strong endorsements including Doreen Akkerman from The Cancer Council of Victoria and Kerri Guy a member of Breast Cancer Network Australia. The publication is not for profit and net proceeds will be donated to these two Charities. Â
If you’d like to get a copy of the book it’s called "My Mum Has Breast Cancer : A Family’s Cancer Journey" and is available from from Melbourne bookstore Book Street on +613 9598 5111 or  bookstreet@bigpond.com.
by cameron | Oct 19, 2006 | Melbourne, Uncategorized
I’ve been meaning to tell you the story behind the now-infamous "GEEK" t-shirt that I’m wearing on the Bulletin cover. That shirt was actually given to me by my mate Jeremy Hague from Netralia, the Melbourne-based start-up who built the first cool tool to record Skype calls, Skylook. The Netralia boys printed up 500 of these shirts to give out at a conference about six months ago and Jeremy saved one for me. On the back of the shirt it has the Skylook URL. So anyway I’ve been wearing the shirt around town and it usually gets a few laughs (or cringes) from people but I just *knew* it was the perfect shirt for the Bulletin shot.
Speaking of Skylook… there is a new version out which has some serious improvements to the older versions. The monitoring window has more features, including the ability to turn the recording off without killing the actual Skype call, and you can also change the bitrate and format for the recording. Lots of cool features and perfect for podcasters.
by cameron | Oct 19, 2006 | Melbourne, Uncategorized
So yesterday was an interesting day. I think perhaps the best reaction to the magazine was from Garth Kidd who called me from a train station in Sydney about 5pm on his way home from work. He obviously hasn’t been reading the blog so he knew nothing about it and he walked up to a news stand, saw my picture, and started pissing himself laughing while the people around him gave him strange looks.
I got a few phone calls and emails but it wasn’t too crazy.
In middle of all that… I was driving around Melbourne about 12pm and my car started to splutter and cough and then died. I managed to steer it over to the curb before it came to a complete stop. The reason? Ran out of petrol. The warning light had been on for… a few hours? A day? A few days? I don’t know. Have been too busy to fill it up. Anyway so fortunately, I was about a block away from the BMW dealership where I bought the car two years ago, so I rang BMW Assist and they sent a guy over about ten minutes later to put some petrol in my tank. I also happened to stop just outside a café so I just calmly put my emergency lights on, went inside, got lunch, and sat there reading the Bulletin until BMW Assist arrived. Ah… the highs and the lows in a day. Who said there is a fine line between the sublime and the ridiculous?
Four days until I leave and I still don’t have accommodation for San Fran. There are going to be a few Aussie Web2.0 guys over there though (Chris Saad, Marty Wells, Nik Cubrilovic) so we’re talking about getting a place and throwing a good old fashioned Aussie BBQ.
God I have so much to do before I leave….
"Went down to St Tropez where Renoir paints the walls…"
by cameron | Oct 14, 2006 | Melbourne, Uncategorized
My Torrent of the Week this week is The Rolling Stone Magazines 500 Greatest Songs Of All Time. Lots of tracks in here I have never even heard of before. Lots I already have too but it doesn’t hurt to have them collected together into a single playlist.
Had a surreal morning today. Was in the city at 8.30am having my photo taken by Julian Kingma, one of Australia’s top celebrity photographers. We shot some stuff in Hosier Lane and some more behind Federation Square. I asked Julian what the favourite photo he’d ever taken was and he said this one of the late Rene Rivkin which he won the 1997 Melbourne Press Club Quill Award. We talked about the some of the people he’s met, including Jamie Oliver, who he shot recently at the opening of Melbourne’s Fifteen restaurant and says is a really nice bloke, and Samuel L. Jackson. What an interesting line of work. For the record (for you, Scott Sherman), Julian prefers shooting on non-digital cameras, although today he was using a Nikon D100.
by cameron | Oct 10, 2006 | Melbourne, Podcast, Uncategorized
Thanks to everyone out there who remembered by birthday today and sent me emails, IMs, called me, etc. It was quite overwhelming. Who the hell ARE all you people anyway? I got happy birthday emails from people I don’t even know. That’s weird. Especially when celebrating birthdays is something you try to avoid. Anyway, I appreciate it.
36…. when I moved from Bundaberg to Melbourne in January 1988, age 17, with a couple of hundred bucks I’d saved up from picking rockmelons over the summer on my girlfriend’s father’s farm, I promised myself I’d be a millionaire by age 25. The plan was – spend three years working out how the world works, then five years to execute "the plan". I had a high school education and was incredibly naive. I remember, after a week in Melbourne, wondering where you bought coat hangers from. I did my weekly shopping at the local 7 Eleven because I thought it was a supermarket. I lived on bread and tomato sauce for a week because I had no money.
Anyway, I didn’t hit the millionaire at 25 goal. At 25 I think I was making about $40,000 a year making corporate videos. So I reset the goal to 30. When I was 27 I landed a job at Microsoft when their share price was climbing. My hiring manager told me I’d be a millionaire in 4 years.
When I was 29 I started my first internet business – it was called Golflounge and we were going to create an online system for booking a round of golf on every golf course in Australia. We even raised $3 million on the back of a napkin. This was about… March 2000. Then Ballmer busted up Bubble 1.0 and we said "hmmm no thanks" to the money. I turned 30 six months later. I was working at Microsoft, making six figure income, traveling around the world, and miserable as hell. Oh and their share price was in a nosedive it STILL hasn’t recovered from. I went into a three-year depression. And I reset the millionaire goal to 35.
One year I turned 35. I was running The Podcast Network. I missed my goal again but at least this time I felt like I was doing something with my life. Finally. And you know? The "millionaire" goal suddenly seemed less important. So I didn’t reset it for 40. My focus had changed from being rich to being useful. I realized along the way that what I wanted wasn’t to be a "millionaire" anyway. What I wanted, what that represented, was freedom. The freedom to do what I wanted, with people I liked, when and where I wanted, and not to have to answer to a boss I didn’t respect.
And you know what? That’s my life today. Okay – I’ll admit, I’d like to have more liquidity. That would take some of the pressure off. But it’s a minor point. I feel like my life has meaning today. I am doing something I totally believe in, it’s a lot of fun, and I’m working with a terrific bunch of people who I respect and admire and am proud to be associated with. I’ve got a loving and supportive family.
I remember being at DEMO in the US last year and hearing several people on stage say "Find something you love to do and success will follow." I’m starting to understand that.
Forget about owning the next GooTube. Forget about being a millionaire for a second. Find something you love to do and you are passionate about and you believe in. Hopefully it will also be something that can impact positively on people’s lives. Then go do it.
That’s my wish for you on my birthday.
